Tuesday, 17 May 2016

You may by now be familiar with the new verb to “Quax” – to perform
an errand, such as shopping for groceries, on a bicycle, where many people
might believe it can only be done with a private car. It derives from the
Auckland, NZ politician who apparently couldn’t conceive how anyone could go
shopping on a bike.

I already regularly go into town and to the supermarket on
my “shopper”, an omafiets-style German bike by the snappily-named VSF Fahhrad
Manufaktur (which I think means something like German Cycling Federation Bicycle
Makers). It’s a mile and a half away and the time penalty of cycling instead of
driving is more than recovered through not having to search for a place to park,
walk over to the ticket dispenser, walk back to the car etc. Plus I save £1 in
parking charges. Traditional quaxing.

Now, I thought, when I’m on holiday, could I transport my
kayak behind my bike? The beach is only
perhaps 10 minutes walk from our house but dragging the kayak on its trolley is
a bit tedious, and car-topping it is completely unjustified, quite apart from
the difficulties of parking the car by the beach in high season.

So, could I tow it behind my bike? In principle, I suppose I could just tie the
end of the kayak to the back of the bike and pull it on its trolley but a
typical kayak trolley has a fairly narrow wheelbase, and if you take a turn at
any speed it would topple.

A typical kayak trolley as sold on Ebay

I looked online for bike-towed kayak trolleys and I found a
couple but they were eye-wateringly expensive. One guy in British Columbia could
sell you one for about C$700, plus another C$150 to ship it here, but that is
almost the cost of the kayak itself.

So, I set to work figuring out how to make one myself. The task was simplified by the fact that the
kayak is the “sit-on-top” variety – instead of sitting inside the hull, you
sit on a fully-sealed polythene shell, which has “scupper holes” to allow water
to drain out from the seat well. The trolleys use the scupper holes to support and
hold the kayak, using alloy tubes poking up vertically through them. Three
metres of assorted 25mm alloy tube, some tube connectors as used to assemble
clothes railings for shops, and a pair of trolley wheels later, and I had my raw
materials.

One metre of a thick-walled tube forms the axle, with holes
drilled at either end to hold R-clips, which keep the wheels in place. The
kayak is 75cm wide so the 1 m wheelbase provides adequate stability to keep the
centre of gravity between the wheels.

Two metres of a thinner walled tube form
upright bars and a framework to support the kayak above the level of the
wheels, all held together with T-section or five-way chromed steel tube
connectors.

Finally, a small hole in the stern post of the kayak,
provided to take the hinge pin of a rudder, makes the tow hitch. A 6mm drop-nosed
pin, as sold in any good marine chandlers, acts as a tow hook, through a hole in
a piece of 2x1 timber battening attached to the rear pannier, to position the
hitch point behind the back of the rear wheel.

So there it is. 39 years working in central London. 33 of
those around Fleet Street. 30 years commuting into Waterloo from South West
Surrey. The First 20 walking the final stage, the final 10 on a bicycle. Prior
to 2006 I would not have contemplated the journey by bike. The section from Waterloo
to Blackfriars Rd either via Belvedere Rd and Upper Ground, or through the back
streets via Roupell St was OK, even if the surface on Belvedere Rd is utterly
crap and the loading vehicles and buses coming at you on the wrong side of the
road can be tiresome – the pavement is mainly on the same level so you can
escape if necessary. However the shit-sandwich which was the cycle lane between
two lanes of fast motor traffic on the northbound carriageway of Blackfriars Bridge, with buses
crossing from left to right, and vehicles crossing from right to left to zoom
down the large-radius turn onto the Embankment slipway, was quite enough to put
me off. I would just as soon have swum across the Nile.

It took a death, actually the second death, of Physiotherapist and Guys/StThomas Trust employee Vicky McCreery, majorly contributed to by this
road layout, although I recall the bus driver who killed her was convicted of
something as a result. (Ironic then that her employer is now whipping up a petition to oppose floating bus stops on the south side of Westminster Bridge on spurious and evidence-free pedestrian-safety grounds).

With what qualifies as lightning speed for a local
authority building a cycle lane, the layout was radically altered. The pavement
was widened, three traffic lanes were reduced to two, and a cycle lane was made
with the difference along the kerb line. Traffic lights were installed on the
sliproad and its turn geometry was tightened to cut the speed at which vehicles
could take the turn. For a while, I counted how any cyclists passed me in the
time it took me to walk from Doggetts pub to the traffic lights on the other
side of the bridge, at virtually the same time every morning. I noted the
numbers treble before I bit the bullet, dusted off my vintage Brompton, and
started to ride.

I still managed to suffer three left hooks on this junction,
each and every one being a taxi, each and every one racing to beat the traffic
light as it went amber. “Amber-gambling” with my life. The third time finally hospitalised
me, albeit months later when the shoulder injury didn’t respond to physio or
drugs.

But I think Blackfriars Bridge galvanised the cycling
community, and it contributed to a change of emphasis at LCC, moving it in the
direction of greater activism and the eventual “Go Dutch” campaign. The bridge
saw more than one flashride which attracted four-figure numbers of cyclists.

Now we have the two new cycle superhighways, one north-south
across Blackfriars Bridge and the other meeting it along the embankment under
the Blackfriars underpass. The sliproad down to the embankment where I suffered
my three left hooks is now for cyclists only.

And it is not just cyclists who have benefitted, despite the City of London's whining about them in their submissions to the consultation. We have a pedestrian crossing over Stamford Street, scandalously absent in all the years I previously walked that route. We have crossings of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill at Ludgate Circus, also previously non-existent. We have re-instated a crossing at Blackfriars Junction which existed for a few short years before being removed again in the remodelling of the road layout last before the current changes.

None of these developments has made, in my anecdotal
experience, any measurable difference to traffic congestion. Perhaps it has
improved it but I am sure it hasn’t made it any worse. The loss of the third
lane back in 2005 or so certainly didn’t have a noticeable impact, possibly
because all that lane-changing was mightily disrupting the flow before.

We can thank Boris Johnson, in almost every other respect a
complete disaster for London, a very clever but shallow, lazy, not-into-detail and
self-absorbed individual, for the installation of the superhighways. We can
applaud Andrew Gilligan for persevering in his part-time role as cycling
commissar, proving that not all journalists are hacks. But frankly, would any
of this have happened without active agitation by cycling campaigners, both
individually and collectively via LCC? Would Boris, personally an active utility
cyclist but one who is apparently content to use ordinary roads “as long as you
have your wits about you”, have responded so positively without the 150 or more
large London corporations, including my own (for one more week) employer,
Deloitte, who supported the campaign? In some cases clients or suppliers of one
well-known nay-sayer who, rumour has it, have been exposed to and shrugged off not-very-subtle
threats as a result?

Whatever, I am glad that I have lived and worked to see
these cycle routes finally opened officially for use, even if I only get about
a dozen days of usage before I retire back to the Sussex borders.